Preference falsification

A wonderful article by Sarah Perry on why our public and private preferences are different. It is from 2015 but I feel it will always be relevant. A long read, but worth it.

Preference falsification is an information theory term for the tendency for people to express a public preference that is different from their private, interior preference. For various reasons, certain preferences may not be publicly acceptable to express; they may be punished by execution, or labor camps, or exile, or social exclusion, or at the very least suspicion and a risk of some of these things. When people do not express their true preferences, they are deprived of the opportunity to coordinate with each other to create a more preferable outcome for both. Preference falsification is not just a political phenomenon, but a product of our dual nature, experiencing ourselves on the one hand from the privileged first-person perspective, and on the other hand from the imagined perspective of others. Pretending to have different preferences than one really does may be necessary to maintain a sense of safety, social belonging, and status.

People’s expressed, public preferences are a function of both their interior preferences and the perceived acceptability of revealing them; other people’s expressed preferences serve as a guide for measuring acceptability. So people’s expressed preferences are in part a function of other people’s expressed preferences. Under certain circumstances, when the distribution of preferences is right, a domino effect may be begun by a single dissenter, toppling the status quo of preference falsification. One dissenter may embolden others, and then together with them give the impression that it is acceptable for others to express their true preferences. On the other hand, people whose preferences are satisfied by the status quo may find it wise to begin to falsify their preferences when a revolution begins to look imminent.

Weaponized Sacredness